The Internet is a dynamic packet network consisting of millions of interconnected computers which could run several applications, such as the World Wide Web. The Internet is implemented using a large variety of connections between those millions of computers. Internet access is readily available to individuals across the globe. Various on-line service providers, such as AMERICA ONLINE, COMPUSERVE, PRODIGY, NETCOM, etc., provide client connections over the public-switched telephone network (PSTN) using modems or integrated services digital network (ISDN) adapters. These on-line service providers maintain servers on the Internet providing client access to the Internet.
The Internet's global and exponential growth is common knowledge today. The recent developments on the World Wide Web user interfaces and information navigation software such as the NETSCAPE WEB browser, coupled with a continuously growing number of public access providers, are making the Internet a fundamental component of the information age, if not the information super highway itself.
A World Wide Web site on the Internet typically resides on a computer known as a server, which is accessed through the Internet by a user utilizing a client computer. A Web site consists of one or more Web pages comprising scripts written in Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and typically resides on a server compatible with HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP, a protocol for interfacing with the Internet). Pages at a Web site are typically accessible and viewed by the user through software called a Web browser, which typically resides on the user's client computer. A Web browser such as the one by NETSCAPE interprets Web page HTML scripts to provide a graphical user interface that allows easy access to various services over the Internet.
The client computer is capable of providing output for display of a Web page to a user, for example through a video display. Such output may take the form of at least one of textual, graphic, animation, video, audio, or virtual object media. The client computer is also capable of accepting input from a user. Such input may be provided by means such as a keyboard, a mouse, a telephone touch pad, a television remote control, and so on.
Users may browse the World Wide Web for virtually any kind of information, including information having content derived from one or more media, such as words, sounds or images. Increasingly, businesses are establishing Web sites as a means of providing information to and attracting potential customers, and Web sites are emerging as a means of transacting business. Users may locate a company's Web site by, e.g., using one of a number of existing search engines available over the Internet, or browsing other Web sites containing links to the company's Web site, or entering directly the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which represents an “address” for the site. Typically, Web browsing takes place in the context of an interactive communication session, where the user may, for example, direct the Web browsing session by choosing to follow hypertext links found in Web sites and/or may respond to information located at various Web sites.
A vast number of businesses and other organizations, such as educational and charitable institutions, employ call centers to handle a variety of telecommunications tasks. Businesses commonly set up or employ call centers that their customers, who may be other businesses or individual consumers, may reach by dialing a toll-free “800” number. Call centers are an important means of providing information to and attracting potential customers, as well as transacting business. For example, call centers may be used for taking orders for products or services, providing customer assistance or technical support, and other sales, marketing and support activities. Call centers have found wide use in, e.g., the travel industry for handling reservations and the banking and financial service industry for account servicing.
A call center utilizes a telecommunications system that may be as simple as a single telephone manned by a single individual, or it may range from a group of agents manning a bank of telephones to an entire department or company having banks of telephones networked through private branch exchange (PBX) equipment dedicated to handling hundreds or thousands of calls. A call center may be located in a single facility with one PBX or in multiple facilities with multiple PBXs.
Call centers often employ interactive voice response (IVR) technology to, e.g., assist users in locating an available call center agent who is able to handle the user's request. A IVR system is, typically, a menu-driven system that prompts a caller to press “1” for a first option, to press “2” for a second option, and so forth, or alternatively prompts the user to enter a telephone extension, a password, an account number, or the like.
Call centers also employ Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) signaling techniques. DNIS signaling is a well known and understood convention which, in the call center context, typically involves passing a code to a call center along with a call representative of the telephone or communications number called; the DNIS code may be used by the call center to further route the call where appropriate.
Call centers enable business to be transacted interactively, in real time. However, call centers typically require significant staffing to handle an expected volume of calls due to inefficiencies created by the need for agents to obtain information about the customer and the subject of the customer's inquiry.
Web sites provide another means of conducting business, albeit not in real time; web sites also do not have the level of interaction possible with a live customer-to-agent telephone call. However, Web sites offer the ability to capture the subject of the customer's inquiry and to provide the customer with preliminary information. Web sites also enable a sales or marketing client to “prequalify” a customer—such as determining the type of consumer and the type and level of goods or services sought by the consumer—before further contact with the consumer takes place. That is, a Web site can be used as a means to characterize the consumer and the consumer's interest, a task not easily accomplished by current IVR systems.
As important as these mechanisms for reaching customers and transacting business are, however, today there is little relationship between the activities of people calling into call centers using “800” or other telephone numbers and the activities of people interacting with Internet-based applications using Web browsers or other Internet-related applications. Typically, a consumer browsing a Web page has no interaction with call center environments. Information collected in the Web environment is not correlated with a call coming into a call center environment, and there is no pulling of Web interaction data into the call flow.
Any relationship between call center and Internet browsing activities is, for the most part, manually coordinated. For example, a consumer using an Internet browser logged into the Internet may be viewing an HTML page from a company's Web site. While browsing the Web page, the consumer may find information regarding a product or service he or she wishes to purchase, but the Web page may not have sufficient information to satisfy the consumer's interest in the product or service. The consumer wishes to call the company for more information regarding the product they have on their page. To obtain further information about the desired product or service, the consumer may call the company's appropriate “800,” or other phone number, which may be listed on the Web page, and reach a call center managed by the company. However, in the typical scenario there is no information associated with the call entering the call center regarding the consumer's interactions with the Web site and what, if any, information the consumer has viewed. The consumer must verbally inform the agent of her discoveries on the Web site or what information she might be viewing, or use other traditional call center techniques, such as automatic number identification (ANI), IVR prompts, etc., provided by call center environments to let the call center agent understand the reason for the incoming call.
There are emerging in the marketplace applications having some limited capability of coordinating a consumer's interaction with a company's Web site to a call center environment. Such applications, like the one by SCOPUS TECHNOLOGY, provide the ability for a consumer who browses a company's Web site to initiate a call-back from a call center agent for the company by, e.g., clicking on a Web site icon or button. Other such premise-based applications include PAGECALL by EDIFY CORPORATION, WEBCALL by SPANLINK COMMUNICATIONS, and NET.VECTORING by GENESYS LABS.
According to information available at SPANLINK'S web site, “WEBCALL” prompts the customer for information and advises the customer when a return call is to be expected; the request for a call to the customer is transferred to a call center queue, from where an outbound call is eventually initiated. The call center agent who receives the call request also has access to customer information as well as information about what pages the customer has viewed at the Web site, through either a screen pop, text-to-speech synthesis or by whispering a URL reference number that the agent can enter; such information is, apparently, either stored at the call center or made available through interaction with the server hosting the Web site. SPANLINK has also announced a service called WEBCALL/RS which, apparently, will incorporate its WEBCALL application at a remote site operated by SPANLINK for use with existing call centers.
According to information available over GENESYS' Web site GENESYS' NET.VECTORING application ties together GENESYS' telephony software, two-way real-time video conferencing and the Internet. When an Internet user clicks a button to connect town agent, a call is connected from the agent to the user and the agent can view the Web page that a user is viewing (as well as account data and information about the user's prior interaction with the Web page). The application can also pass data for signaling to the telephone network, permitting the network to set up the call.
According to information available at EDIFY'S Web site, PAGECALL enables a call center agent to retrieve customer information and to track what Web pages at the Web site a customer has selected.
Although the above-described applications represent an improvement over the non-integration or manual integration of Web and call center experiences, certain disadvantages remain. With the possible exception of the WEBCALL/RS application by SPANLINK, these applications are premise-based, meaning they are tied into a specific call center environment; a Web site must interact with the call center in an application-specific manner, and the call center must incorporate the technology for receiving any customer identification or other information from the Internet. These applications also generally do not have the ability to route a call externally to any call center.
The above-identified shortcomings result in increased expense for development of integrated solutions. Web site developers need to be concerned about the particular on-premise requirements for each system. Call center environments must incorporate the capability of making call routing decisions based upon any information it receives about the customer's Web interaction.
Further, these applications do not provide bonding of Internet browsing sessions and call center sessions at the time the call request is delivered to the call center. Session bonding in this context is the process of maintaining a continued association between the customer's Web session and the call between customer and call center. Session bonding would permit, e.g., the call center agent to pass information (such as visual information in a Web page) over the Internet to the user while, at the same time, speaking with the user over a telephone connection. To the extent the above-referenced applications provide any session bonding (e.g., the Edify PageCall™ application), such bonding is accomplished only from the call center to the customer, and only with an application-specific interface at the call center—requiring a tight coupling between call center and customer. This has a disadvantage of requiring the call center to include mechanism for controlling the interaction between telephone and Web communications. Such control mechanism is not required within the call center environment if the bonding takes place external of the call center environment.
Coordination of the Internet browsing and call center activities can enhance the capability of using existing call centers and the Internet to provide the desired marketing, sales and customer handling services. For example, judgments about initiating or routing calls could be based upon Web interaction data.
What is desired is a way to enable coordination of information at the network-based level between existing call centers and a packet network, such as the Internet, to create improved integration of and bonding between call center and Web-based communication sessions in order to increase productivity and efficiency and to enable better call routing while delivering to the call center agent information about the call and the customer along with the call. Such coordination and delivery of information related to the person's interactions with the Internet along with the routing of calls would enable existing call centers to obtain the advantages of coordinated Web interaction while using standard call center hardware and software without additional customized hardware or software.